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Tuesday, January 3, 2012

SANTA strikes again!!!!

OK, so like I was saying: me and the wife are out and about yesterday, at the grocery, you know, stocking UP before today's mini-blizzard, and on the way home its like"we need a bottle of cheapo jug wine" and so we pull into the friendly wine store and after the friendly dude there has answered my question ("other than chardonnay, what is all this other stuff???" which took awhile) we wander down a bit to the county reuse center. The county dump has this awesome store full of old doors, computers, TVs, fun stuff like that, luckily, miles from the dump--a real store. They have full-time employees that make sure stuff is clean and works (like this mac computer I am using now...we bought it dead cheap from them last summer).

We are walking up to the door a minute after they open, and there, out front is a......KILN. I am stopped in my tracks. It is my dream kiln. Every time my old kiln breaks down, which is a lot, I call up Andrew at the clay supply place

"Andrew, my gawdammn kiln broke down....how much would a SMALL L and L kiln cost, without a computer controller?" and he is friendly and jolly and will tell me, depending, hundreds, nay THOUSANDS it would cost......so I keep repairing my gawdammn old kiln...

And there, yesterday, sitting in front of the reuse center yesterday, is a dead cheap, SMALL L and L kiln, used by my guess only a few times, and basically in new, mint condition, with a bunch of shelves and bricks and even the owners book. Beautifully cared for and stored. I am there taking it apart, looking it over, and this young bearded dude is hovering around (that happened with this computer last summer--I had to fling some elbows to keep other shoppers away). So, young bearded dude is hovering around, and I reach out and remove the price tag...the kiln is not free, but its CHEAP. The cheapest used kiln I have even seen, and soooo perfect....young bearded dude is like"you gonna buy that, because I..."and I cut him off"YES. I am buying it" and I throw some elbows and stand in front protectively while the wife gets the tiny little subaru.....

Not sure yet how all this fits together in the studio, but so far.....

At the dump?! THE DUMP?!? I have three kilns sitting around that DON'T work; why would someone throw away a kiln that DOES? It never ceases to amaze me what people just throw out...savages. Good news for you though!

great score! we have an old L&L that was GIVEN to me by Sue Babine's sister (Sue is a LNHC clay member, you may know her). It works great, no computer... it is bigger and older than yours but is in good shape. Jeff replaced the elements once and a switch.

Our pottery club was deperate for a new kiln when my sister Annie's school decided to give there's away. Sounds fantastic but 12 months in storage then 12 more months for the electrician to get it all together and finally on Christmas eve this year it was successfully fired. Free meant a lot of patience and waiting before it was useful to us